4 takeaways from the Jan. 6 hearing on Trump’s actions — and inaction - US News Today

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The Jan. 6 hearings on Thursday night finally dealt with one of the most central but least-understood aspects of that day: what President Donald Trump was up to while his supporters waged an attack on the U.S. Capitol in his name, seeking to return him to office by force.

The hearing featured live testimony from former White House aides Matthew Pottinger and Sarah Matthews, along with further details of former White House counsel Pat Cipollone’s videotaped testimony.

1. Cipollone’s significant timeline

Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone testified to the Jan. 6 select committee that President Donald Trump waited hours to call off rioters on Jan. 6. (Video: The Washington Post, Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

We received the long-awaited, more detailed testimony from Cipollone, and it didn’t disappoint.

Cipollone offered a timeline of events that day that, at the least, reinforces just how derelict Trump was.

Because the White House itself has been something of a black box, there have been questions about just how quickly Trump appreciated the gravity of the situation on Jan. 6 — particularly how much he knew about the violence when he tweeted attacking Vice President Mike Pence at 2:24 p.m., while rioters were in the Capitol.

Cipollone said he personally learned the gravity of the situation before rioters had entered the Capitol — something that transpired around 2:15 p.m. Crucially, he said his and other staffers’ push for a strong statement to quell the violence began as early as around 2 p.m.

He declined to comment on conversations with Trump, citing executive privilege, but said he repeatedly and forcefully pushed for this inside the White House.

“I think I was pretty clear there needed to be an immediate and forceful response — statement, public statement — that people need to leave the Capitol,” Cipollone said.

His timeline would mean that two or more hours passed before Trump’s 4:17 p.m. video telling people to go home. And it places the consternation before many of the text messages we’ve seen from White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’s phone.

And Cipollone repeatedly sought to emphasize he wasn’t the only one making the case in the intervening two hours.

“Just to be clear, many people suggested it — not just me,” he said. “Many people felt the same way.”

He confirmed they included Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump, White House lawyer Eric Herschmann and Meadows.

The committee also cited an unnamed witness who said Trump knew about the violence even earlier — 11 minutes after his speech on the Ellipse. But Cipollone might be the best evidence yet that people were calling for action extremely early in the insurrection.

2. Cipollone’s striking, strained no comment

Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone said he couldn’t reveal privileged communications when asked if President Donald Trump wanted Jan. 6 rioters to leave. (Video: The Washington Post)

While that Cipollone testimony was perhaps more explicitly damaging, another portion of his testimony arguably spoke louder — with his struggling silence.

At one point, Cipollone was asked if anyone on White House staff didn’t want the rioters to go home. “On the staff?” he responded. Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said she wanted to know about anybody “in the White House.” Cipollone said he couldn’t “think of anybody” who didn’t want that. Then the committee members asked him about one other person: Trump himself.

Then came the awkwardness.

Cipollone said he understood the question to be about White House staff, which it initially was, but Cheney indeed clarified it was about anybody in the White House. He was then asked directly about Trump. Cipollone hemmed and hawed, unsure of answering the question. He talked about whether it might be privileged, conferring with his lawyer. He seemed to want to give his view — but struggled with whether to do it. “I can’t…